Letters for personal catharsis

Angry Bear – WARNING! OFFENSIVE CONTENT

This morning my computer almost couldn’t connect to WordPress, the thin line of sanity I’ve been reeling out behind me as I navigate the woods of shit reality. One, two, three’s the charm and somehow (thank you goddess) everything connected. Barring me from my blog this morning would only lead to violence.

I almost killed a motherfucker last night. Seriously. Took everything in me to NOT fuck him up. In the end, people laughed at my reaction, they ignored me, and they sent me into an even deeper rage that still lingers this morning and if I should walk out of my apartment building today and SEE the fucker I ran into last night he WILL get tripped up and spat upon.

Feel like an ass just relating this, ’cause I know it’s one of those things that wouldn’t bother me so much if I wasn’t bipolar.

Had to run downstairs to the grocery store last night to pick up coffee for this morning. Easy peasy. Down 4 flights, in the store, yeah! it’s not too crowded. Slink back to the coffee isle; pick up two Lavazza packs. Turn, head to cashiers. The woman in the fast queue was ponying up her cash so I thought, great, less than two fucking minutes and I’m outta here. Well, the woman was exchanging the world or something, I don’t know. Ended up with 3 or 4 little cash transactions as the cashier ran or re-ran one item and either got money from the woman or gave it back. Annoying when I expected a fast transaction; all the other lines had people with only 5 or 6 items, so every line should have been fast last night. Ok, I thought. She’s an old woman doing SOMETHING. Give her a break. So I tried to relax and not get annoyed and failed miserably. Then….Before the old woman walks away, this ASSHOLE behind me (young immigrant from Northern Africa) skipped behind me and slammed his single beer in front of the cashier. He then dicked around paying for said beer – a grand mother fucking total of 55 cent – with his fucking ATM card.

My mouth hung open. I could NOT believe the balls on the this fucker. So I spoke up and said, ‘You know, if I spoke your language I’d tell you what a right mother fucker you are. You should have your fucking balls ripped off. How dare you be so fucking rude? Do you even KNOW rude, motherfucker?’

This elicited confused looks from said mother fucker and amusement from the cashier.

It will be many a day before I return to the store downstairs. I’ll do my shopping in one of three major grocery stores within a 10 minute walking distance, thank you very little. And I’ve more than half a mind to write out my tirade, translate it on google into Dutch, and post it to the goddamn manager of the store. Seriously. That shit’s gotta fucking stop.

It’s letting people get away with these little rude things that end up leading us to bigger fucking problems. That motherfucker should have got the SHIT beat out of him for being rude. What, did he think his ONE beer was more important than my two coffees? That he’d take less time than me? That my time wasn’t worth as much as his so it was ok for him to just skip me? Was he just a fucking Muslim who thought, ‘oh, it’s just a lowly woman, she doesn’t matter,’? What I find even more repulsive was the cunt cashier’s reaction. She saw what the fuck happened. She could have refused to ring him up first, and just take my stuff through. She could have told him he skipped his place. And she SURE as fuck didn’t need to laugh at my reaction over the whole fucking thing.

I was in kill mode. Shaking so bad I barely made it back up. Avoided getting in the lift because a kid was there and I knew I was exuding that terminator feel and I didn’t want to scare the little shit even tho he probably fucking deserved it for some shit or another.

I’ve prided myself on getting a little past that blank wall of rage. The kind that really does lead to me physically assaulting someone. Before, only my sister could enrage me to that point. Last night I learned it’s still in me, still ready to kill, WANTING to fucking kill someone because they ALL fucking deserve it. It’s still alive and awake in me now, barely contained. And now I get to spend the next I don’t know how many days trying to ease it back into sleep.

Ended up popping an Ativan last night. My bro gave me a few while sick to help me sleep. I’ve not wanted to take them; I know they’re addictive and I have enough problems sleeping as it is. But last night I needed to shut down and shut down fast. So I popped one without much thought. Managed to keep me asleep for 8 hours.

That calm place in me has never seemed so fucking far from where I’m currently standing.

And the whole ‘keep the smoking to a minimum’ shit was thrown out the fucking window. I came back home and SMOKED.

The best thing I can do for me right now is keep me occupied. If I’m not occupied, I think, and when I think, I get angry. I’m mentally filling up my weekend. Walk, lotto card, get the GOOD cocoa from Albert Hein at Hesseplats, feed the ducks, come back and load up my groove box and start getting it ready for live play. Fuck if I’m gonna sit around any fucking longer. I’ll take my new music out and play it for fucking FREE to get it out there. At least it will get heard. And there’s always loads of places that will let you play music for free. Just as many as there are publishers who’ll take your writing for free. Fucking exploitative fucks.

At least when I’m listening to my own music I can’t be angry. I got it too RIGHT for me, which still astounds me since I wrote all of it when I was depressed. So off I go to soothe the bear that’s still growling and scratching at the world…

Yep. I didn’t like the post either. And I don’t like me when I get angry, bigoted, racist, sexist, agist, spiritualist, or body-ist at ALL.

The fact is, tho, that some part of me DOES carry all of that, because all and any of it will rear its head and come out at times. I hate myself for thinking it, and usually regret such thoughts within moments of getting them out of me.

I’m doing my best to write my posts freely and without self censorship. So the comment went up because that’s what went through my mind at the time. To censor it out would mean I reject that part of me. I’m trying to not reject any part of me, tho admittedly that’s damned difficult.

So I offer this to you and anyone else out there who was offended: I know I was offensive. I know I made a racist statement. Completely my bad. However, I will not censor my own words. Not here. If that means you feel you have to stop following my blog or reading my posts, then ok. This place is for me – for ALL the ugly thoughts, not just the ones I think are ok to put out here.

In future, if I’ve included a slur in my post, I’ll add a warning on the top. This may not alleviate your concerns and if so, I’m truly sorry. I have to get this poison out of me, tho, and it’s a many colored poison. Most of the time I don’t even know what’s in there, and what I write is as surprising to me as it is to anyone who reads my stuff.

Thanks for answering, I was worried you’d just grrrr at me and that would be that. I think putting a warning on posts like that is a good idea, not even for those who’d be offended by it so much as those who’d be hurt by it. If you hadn’t specified immigrant, North Africa and Muslim, your rage would’ve still come through, but I respect you a lot for wanting to face it. To face yourself. If you posted hate and racism a lot, you wouldn’t even lose readers, you’d just get a different kind of reader. And obviously while you’re posting it in public, and with commenting enabled, you’re opening yourself to comments and discussion about it – and obviously it’s entirely your right to respond or not, and to respond however you want to.

I read your post and was totally getting your burning anger and its causes (mixed episodes do that to me), when I got to the ‘immigrant’ bit, my hackles rose slightly. In the end, I read your post three times to try to understand where it was coming from. And I do. Despite apartheid here, since 2007 my country has still perpetrated racist horrors in the form of xenophobia, to the extent that refugee camps sprang up. Racism and hate happen everywhere, between almost every population group a d it always starts with reasonable people and excuses. I get it. I feel it too, sometimes. Because I live where I do, complex racial dialectic is always there. The nuances of it, the humour it provokes, anything you can imagine, are always under discussion here. Shit I’m digressing as usual.

Posts like yours, without commentary, will inspire emotion. In me it was shock and dismay – the dismay because, as I said, I like you. It also hurt, for various reasons we don’t need to explore. That’s not even particularly relevant. What’s relevant is that the guy could well have been an asshole, or he could have been mentally ill, or he could’ve been acting African style in shops, where polite queuing isn’t always a thing. He might have been a nasty Muslim sexist, he might have been a truly good Muslim man, he might not have been a Muslim at all. I’m not saying anything you don’t know, I realise that. What I am saying is that you have the option to think this entire concept through to the point where you confirm or deny your own views and reactions. And the more you think and talk about it, the more space you put between anger and reaction. And that will ultimately change your reaction.

You not censoring yourself is all very well, but without context, it’s just ugly invective and by punching it out there without explanation, all you’re doing is swelling the Internet’s already huge amount of ist and ism anger. Of course you can post what you want on your own blog and of course it’s my choice to read it or not. I want to read you. I’m glad you wrote the comment that you did.

…Again, you’re right. I re-read the post, too. It IS cutting and vindictive and nasty in all the ways I don’t want to be. And I’m so regretful for hurting you in ANY way. You are not someone I wanted to hurt. I apologize for my off the cuff, out of hand remark.

Yes, I totally get the anger, and your reaction, however ugly it was. I understand that those are not your ‘sane’ feelings about people of other cultures. You are an immigrant yourself, so you would ultimately be tarring yourself with the same brush by stereotyping in that way… Anger is the worst for me. Because, as with you, it brings out utterly irrational reactions that contradict all of my beliefs in human rights, and acceptance of all people, no matter their culture, race, or religion (or sexual orientation, or SES).

That’s not to say that being angry is wrong. Its not. Its OK to get angry, but its never OK to hurt other people (physically or emotionally) – and lets face it, being bipolar, we have to work a million times harder than the average person to control that, because its a fucking BEAST.

Like blahpolar, I understood where it was all coming from, but it also made me uncomfortable. And it made me uncomfortable for a couple of reasons. Firstly, your reactions go against everything I believe in (as mentioned above), and secondly, because I know that I do the SAME thing when I am in the frame of mind you were in. I appreciate your not censoring what was going through your mind at the time, but it probably would be wise to put a disclaimer at the beginning of the post warning of offensive content, and maybe let your readers know that those thoughts are not a true representation of who YOU are, but what bipolar and anger do to you.

I want you to know, Beeps, that I do not judge you for your rant, because I don’t believe that those are your go-to core beliefs. I respect that you are being real with your feelings, and showing people what it is to have bipolar (for you). It ain’t pretty.

Thanks for understanding, even if it did make you cringe. Belatedly, I’ve added a warning right in the title. Figured you and Blahpolar were quite correct about that….Don’t know why it took me so long, other than my head’s been turned around by a couple of things today…

Like you, I really don’t feel that way when I’m…sane? Untriggered? It was a way out of line reaction. I thought so as I wrote it. I hated myself for thinking it. As you so eloquently point out, I’m an immigrant as well, so I threw myself a sneak punch there as well. Bad on me double time. Hells bells, bad on me triple time for lashing out like that full stop. As a believer in karma, I just bent over and fucked myself up the ass with that.

I guess if I screwed up my karma and all that, at least I did it being honest. I’ve fucked myself for much less honest actions. And that hurts more. I think it might even hurt other people more, but I guess I’m not in the right space to make THAT judgement call. *sigh* And maybe I should just stop offering justifications and accept I screwed up.

And it is precisely these inappropriate reactions that make us “disordered” – know what I mean? Because those reactions just aren’t usual for you – they’re out of the ordinary. Uncharacteristic of your ‘normal’ behaviour. Anyhoooooooo…. Enough of that…

And yeah, take responsibility for your actions (which I think you’ve done). You may not be in control of your rantings when they happen, but you’re in control of how you respond to them (and yourself) after they have happened. BUT, better yet, since these outbursts make you feel shitty about yourself, and karma coming to knob you in the bungholio, try change how you react in those situations. I used to see a divine psychologist and she once told me that my reactions were either all or nothing, and that I should maybe think about choosing something in-between. Like if someone angered me, take a step back and think about the nicest thing I could say (“Excuse me, I think I was ahead of you in line, but you go on ahead since you only have one little item worth 55c), and the worst thing I could say (“Excuse me cunt-face, who the fuck do you think you are pushing in front of me in this checkout line! Motherfucker!!!”), and then choose something in-between that might be more appropriate for the actual situation.

I’ve used that strategy for the past decade or so, and its worked for me (mostly). If I find myself in a situation where I can ONLY think of the worst thing to say, I walk away and say nothing. And then obsess about it for months, if not years afterwards…. But then it was my problem in the first place, and then karma can’t come knocking at my back entrance 😉

I hear you. The mid-point retort is a good one to keep in mind. When I’m not spasming with anger I can do that. Truth is, I probably was not in a proper state of mind to leave the apartment. I remember feeling irritated as I left. Maybe that’s even more important for me to remember: just wait until I’m ready to go out among the herd. Stop asking myself to ‘just go and do it; it will only take 5 minutes’. Sometimes I don’t have 5 minutes to give, I guess.

Currently a final year English student at the University of Cambridge. Producing Intern for Fuel Theatre July-October 2016. Aspiring Arts Administrator/Theatre Producer, blogging about my projects (mostly).

#ActuallyAutistic - An Aspie obsessed with writing. This site is intend to inspire through sharing stories & experiences. The opinions of the writers are their own. I am just an Autistic woman - NOT a medical professional.